Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s double-feature tribute to the exploitation films of the 1970s and ’80s has enough guilty-pleasure giddiness to make it fun for film buffs – there are even fake trailers for other grind-house films – but it’s also a bit of a limited exercise. Both filmmakers have already proven capable of elevating, not just celebrating, movie trash – Rodriguez with Sin City and Tarantino with Jackie Brown – so why are they now content to simply wallow in it? With Kurt Russell anchoring Tarantino’s Death Proof as a homicidal stunt-car driver and Rose McGowan in Rodriguez’s Planet Terror as a go-go dancer who loses a leg to zombies. (She gets revenge by attaching a machine gun to her stump.)
